Ignoring the man does not make him the victim of your choices, as murdering him does. It simply means you're not intervening into his situation either way. The evil that is allowed now can force others to bear the brunt of the consequences, and I'd argue is in a lot of cases even necessary due to the system of reality we exist in. To me this is a huge distinction. I've mentioned this has been abstracted away by human dominance, but in the past when resources were limited it would be necessary to kill, either indirectly by taking the available resources, or directly by killing the competition to ensure you and your people got the resources. It's hard to see that as the most ideal classroom.
You posit that a world where everyone is super powerful would be chaos, I have previously posed the solution that we all live in our own reality where we have godlike power, if this life is to be a test. Even if we discount that possibility, it's not hard to believe existence would have reached an equilibrium. Technology has allowed us to kill people so much more efficiently than ever but there are also more people than ever, so we're not in this posited state of mega chaos despite guns, tanks, nukes, bombers, etc.
I think "this is best" is the simple answer and is in some ways necessary to believe in order to believe God is all knowing, all powerful, and all good. But I find, without being able to really expand on this, for it to be unsatisfying intellectually. I'm sure before agriculture people, without being about to conceive of alternatives, thought finding berries in the woods was best. I believe this line of thinking ends up at "God works in mysterious ways", which is fine but as I said, I find to be unsatisfying when trying to reason this out. Either way, appreciate you
I'll mea culpa on the science thing because that was another user who jumped into the conversation earlier and I had not cared to pay enough attention to notice the difference.
What I won't mea culpa is the alleged "dodging" of the hypothetical. I asked many hypotheticals that encompassed that more than encompassed yours (and some non-hypotheticals like the mechanisms by which your worldview works), but you need to reduce it to argue your point and now feign indignation that I "dodged" the hypothetical, despite it being a simplification of questions you already chose to ignore. Hypotheticals that were asked to come to a deeper understanding, not ones orchestrated in their simplicity to win an argument. Or maybe you truly do feel indignant despite the hypocrisy, that wouldn't be atypical.
You believe what you believe and there is no need for evidence. Everything flows downstream from that. It's great for you personally, and I do really mean that, but it's useless in discussion. Whatever piece you may need to say I'm sure you will but there is no value left to be had in this exchange. So, you can enjoy the last word should you choose
There is more data, but competition is inherent in the struggle for existence, at every level. We have been able to abstract some of that away from human life because we have do thoroughly dominated all other life on this planet. If you have data to contradict this, I'm happy to look at it. It's very easy to say "higher order thinking" is unresolved data but one could say the emergence of higher order thinking is an advantage that gives the ability to so thoroughly dominate the world.
People do see it as natural law. Because most people understand that if you do good things, good things tend to happen in return, and bad things likewise. If you're a dick to everyone, you probably die because no one will help you when you get in trouble, if you're helpful to everyone it's the opposite. You can choose to believe that in a spiritual sense or not. I actually tend towards believing that in a spiritual sense and very strongly tend towards there being a Creator God, and Christ being a representative of Him. (Though I admit my faith is far from rock solid as I continually try to sort out the nature of all things, but all that aside). In the sense of debate I tend away from relying on that which cannot be observed.
Evil exists, perhaps. We have actions that we perceive as evil, but is it because we see the negative consequences that arise as a result of destructive behaviors or is it because of something higher? Even an animal knows not to touch something that burns it, and would probably consider that thing to be evil. Is the reason we see common morality throughout cultures because humans observe the same behaviors as being destructive, or is there a higher reason? I like to believe that the latter is true, but the concept of "evil" as behaviors we've recognized are destructive does not automatically imply there is free will, only that it is advantageous to avoid them. For what it's worth I do believe in free will, but that is a belief, it is not founded in logic and evidence that I can present
This is something which is very difficult to wrap one's head around because we are only accustomed to the universe we live in. But if we are to use your analogy, you could be in a video game where there are infinitely many choices but the evil ones are still in some ways precluded. Let's say you could do anything but kill another person, the laws of physics could be changed (like in a game) to somehow not allow this. There are still infinite choices. Even better, if you're trying could know whether or not you attempted to kill someone, but prevent them from actually getting killed. But regardless, there are infinitely many ways the universe could have been created. If we were created without the need to eat other organisms to survive, to need to compete over finite resources etc, much of what we see as evil would not exist. Further still, humans would still find interest in all sorts of things and all sorts of pursuits in the absence of evil, there would still be an expression of self and free will. If we accept that the universe could be structured in a way that still allows humans to act in infinite ways but avoids evil being possible, the question becomes, "why is evil necessary?". The typical answer posited is "because it's a test".
This goes back to my analogy about how I cannot actually fly, because there are physical limitations. No matter how much I may will it, I cannot break these laws. One might ssk why aren't they more restrictive of evil? But if one accepts that this existence is a test there are other questions to ask: why aren't the laws of physics, or any other universal law we're governed by, then even more tolerant of evil? If the point of all this is to show whether or not I'm evil, wouldn't it be better for my physical limitations to not exist? What if I were very powerful, would I abuse it? If I were extremely attractive would I be a womanizer? Because I'm not I get to slip by as good? Why, if we need to go through this evil to be tested, are we not all being tested at the limits? Why do some face great temptation and falter while others who would likely falter facing the same temptation never face it?
Also I very much appreciate the way you engaged with this I don't see it as ganging up at all, I realize my viewpoint is in the minority. I appreciate that you're really attempting to understand, even if we don't end up seeing eye to eye
It is not a weak deflection, and I made the distinction because you said vegetarian which is much different than vegan. Competition appears to be in all ways the nature of this universe, from the atomic level to the observable human level. Competition that is part of survival (for food, resources, natural security, reproductive security, etc) will lend itself to actions we consider to be evil. It takes higher order thinking to avoid those and even that thinking is primarily used to some type of end that is beneficial in that way. This is why complex organisms have reward systems in their brains, more complex biological directives.
We can grant that entropy is a law, but have we seen any type of greater manifestation of it in living organisms? It seems to me there are a lot of ideas you can connect if you're trying to prove a certain conclusion, but they don't really fit together naturally with the evidence available now
You bring up a good edge case. The fruit then likely loses out on the potential of its own continuing through seeds, but that's not the same as death. Vegan cats are super unhealthy, and a diet that relies on human supply chains and the such, while still being suboptimal, certainly is not something that would have happened in nature. So if you grant only fruits were ever being eaten by all animals, and that primarily carnivorous animals for some reason have a bunch of characteristics and instincts that are specialized for hunting and killing that were simply pointless before the fall, sure, why not. It's an incredible stretch with essentially no backing but you're welcome to believe it.
The rest of this is pseudo philosophical nonsense. It can't be possible because you said so
So, why does Chad deal with much more temptation in his life than the incel? Certainly there are many who've fallen into temptation who wouldn't have had they simply not been in a given situation. Should we not be made to face the totality of all situations if reaching virtuosity is the true goal of this system? Why does this system of virtue and sin exist in the first place? That can't be put onto man's actions because it was God who put the prohibition on the fruit, thereby making it a forbidden action. It simply could have never been created. Was that system all put into place so God can test beings despite already knowing what each is going to do?
You did not answer any of my hypotheticals, you again simplified it to "why is life hard? God wants to test us". But my hypotheticals were nuanced and in multiple directions. If what you posit is correct, why aren't things harder? Why can't we insist upon our will and break the laws of physics, surely that would be a better way to test a person's virtue or lack thereof, to go back to your own example, make everyone a universal gigachad and see what they do.
You CONTINUE to simplify and avoid the difficult questions, as well as avoiding providing proof of previous claims such as science showing us animals were originally designed to function better without death. I tried to give a peaceful offramp to this conversation but then you pulled out the typical holier-than-thou "you know I'm right but you're too stubborn to admit it" schtick that people who are stuck up regarding their religion always pull out. So please, either provide evidence for claims you yourself made earlier and actually try to answer the nuanced, multi-faceted questions that have been asked of you WITHOUT reducing them to the strawman you are accustomed to knocking down, or just let this go. You're not doing either of us any favors in your purposeful obtusiveness
Still avoiding the hypotheticals, going to the extreme (that we can only have exactly what we have or a tyrant God who stamps out all traces of free will), and backtracking on the purported scientific evidence that animals were created for a world without death.
What I'm getting out of this is you have less interest in debating than asserting your worldview, which is fine when it comes to religion. Basically the answers to all questions that were not collapsed into easily dispatched charicatures of themselves is: "there is no way to actually understand this, but we know it's true because we've been told it's true". That doesn't fly for me, so I feel any chance of this conversation being productive has ended. I appreciate the respectful engagement, and while I don't appreciate my points becoming repeatedly simplified, I understand that happens in discussion
That's what these assets do when they're out of the spotlight. Remember Bin Laden had a bunch of video games too
You are again being extremely limiting on the ways the world could be created. You're changing my contention to fit your framework. What is death? Did God create death? If not, where did it come from? Why did it exist after the fall? Did God change creation after the fall? If not, by what mechanism was it changed? Did God create that mechanism, or...? But even arguing in this framework is presupposing your beliefs, to which I'd still ask for an actual breakdown of how animal physiology supports a world without death (and how that effects plant death, why animals have to experience death if humans were the ones who made the mistake, etc). Still I'm interested in your answers to these questions.
So, let's talk a different way. I have free will but that doesn't mean I can do anything I want. I cannot fly. No matter how much I will it, I am limited by physical reality, a set of systems God put in place. So, how is it not possible to still have free will and have constraints on evil? Perhaps a man could only become physically aroused in the presence of a woman he made a sacred marriage pact with, surely God could make that happen. If free will itself were so important, we should all be living in our own simulations and be able to impose our wills however we want, to truly see what we would do. Otherwise our free will is held in check by the limitations of our physical reality which certainly could have been made more restrictive to remove or reduce evil, OR less restrictive so there is even greater capacity for evil. Free will is already not unlimited, so why would further limits contradict the importance of free will? Why wouldn't fewer limits highlight it?
Do not boil my argument down to automatons and AI girlfriends, you are trying to make a dumbed down argument to respond to so you can impose your already existing belief frameworks onto this debate
You are equivocating them by using your hypothetical question of "if your son becomes a murderer are you responsible?" in response to the argument you're responding to. The person having a son did not create the world where murder is possible, where the son will have instincts that drive him to want to commit murder, the human father does not know his son WILL commit murder and let it happen anyway, etc etc. it's a false equivalence whether you want it to be or not
I would be interested to understand how the physiology of say a lion or cheetah work better without death. Remember, plants are alive too so anything eating plants is killing them, they cry out for help when being cut down. And what of decaying organic matter? It seems like you must be working towards a foregone conclusion to find such evidence but I'm open to it so let's get into it.
You are presupposing those are the only options and in doing so you are limiting God's power from omnipotence. Your assertions, to be true, require that He could only create things with either free will and evil or neither. That doesn't sound reasonable for a Being to Whom all of existence is ascribed
The key difference is you or I did not create the universe and all the conditions within it. Evil arises due to the nature of things. We live in a world where essentially every single thing must kill or at the very least rely on death (plants needing decaying organic matter in the soil) to survive. Where primal desires fuel all, or almost all (depending on your perspective) behaviors. Equivocating someone born into this system reproducing to a Being that ostensibly constructed the system this way is not honest
Talks about how well done this is while not even being able to tell whether the system is in place on this very thread. Kowtow more
Infighting as in people of this community fighting amongst themselves? That seems fair, we should be able to fight and challenge each other
Certainly expressing an opinion is also valid in a thread like this, yeah?
How many licks indeed, over 200 in this thread so far
So you agree that censorship is bad. Maybe I'm a time traveler that's here to warn you of the disastrous consequences about to be inflicted from this new direction! As you say the world may never know, or perhaps it shall...
Because on a conspiracy forum we generally believe that free speech is important and censorship is inherently wrong (especially when the censorship being enforced is the same as the "regime", however you want to define that, is enforcing). It's not just about being able to use slurs.
I just don't understand how you can hold the belief that we need to clamp down on this speech because it's going to get us shutdown and people literally jackbooted, but then say, "eh I'll allow it in some places so people stop being mad". I do think it's good that you're considering how to handle other viewpoints (though I disagree with the handling) and am trying to keep a measured head about this. But I just cannot understand how you can hold these two ideas at once. It's cognitive disonnence to the extreme
Why can't you? If you're going to have "NSFW" zones simply to placate users, while having true cause to believe the content posted there is so dangerous we have to worry about intelligence agencies shutting us down and users potentially being grabbed from their homes by boots on the ground, you are acting in a way that is INCREDIBLY foolish. So either you are not mentally sound to be moderating this board or that point was not material to this discussion. There really isn't a middle ground here
So I will have to reiterate this invalidates any kind of concern about the well-being of members being grabbed by foot soldiers, or federal agencies looking for any excuse to shut us down. Can we admit that was not an actual justification for enforcement now?
Then you're not very observant, but I believe you're also very new so it checks out
It's funny how you got downvoted for saying the C-word. It's an instinctive trigger to Q-bies, even though if you look into High Control Groups, you'll find their communities use all the exact same techniques
No, it doesn't. You can say not acting was the wrong thing to do, and I'd agree, but the man is still only victimized by his own choices, mistakes, etc in that case. He is in no way being victimized by the choice not to save him, he is simply not being saved. Taking the idea that not taking action is victimizing to people who would benefit from that action to its logical conclusion - this means if you are not spending all time you have looking for people to help, you are victimizing every single person that you have the physical capability to help in some way. Seems ludicrous